Sagaran Elementary School | Talakag, Bukidnon, Mindanao, Philippines
Sagaran Elementary School sits high in the mountains of Mindanao, along the western edge of the Mt. Kitanglad Range, in Barangay Sagaran, Talakag, Bukidnon. It’s about 30 kilometers from the town center of Talakag and roughly 50 kilometers from Cagayan de Oro City, the nearest major city. For the 354 children who study here, this is home.
The school serves Higaunon Indigenous communities from the surrounding mountain areas. Most families get by on seasonal farming and farm labor, so money is tight, and basic improvements can take years to happen. Still, every morning the children come to school, notebooks in hand, and sit down to learn. The school they walk into is doing all of this with very little.
A school making do
Sagaran Elementary has eleven classrooms. Three have dirt floors and were never meant to be permanent. Several grade levels share rooms because there simply aren’t enough of them to go around. Grade 7 has no classroom at all right now; those classes are held at the barangay hall, and the school stage sometimes doubles as a classroom too.
Teachers keep teaching anyway. Children keep showing up. And the community keeps trying to close the gap: they’ve started building comfort rooms, worked on a water supply, and begun a handwashing facility, all with parents, teachers, and neighbors putting in their own labor and whatever materials they could gather locally. A lot of that work is still unfinished. That’s where support can make the difference between started and done.
The simple things matter
During our visit, one need was hard to miss: sanitation facilities that still aren’t where they should be. Some existing structures have aging components, damaged plumbing, and not enough water fixtures or space for handwashing. The handwashing facility the community began building is still incomplete.
That might sound minor from the outside. For a child, it isn’t. A working toilet means privacy. A place to wash hands means a child can actually practice the hygiene lessons they’re taught in class, rather than just hear about them. Reliable water means those facilities work every day, not only when conditions happen to cooperate. These are things many schools take for granted. At Sagaran, they’re still a work in progress.
That’s why the Rotary Club of Cagayan de Oro East Urban is bringing Project HUGAS to Sagaran Elementary. HUGAS stands for Health, Unity, Good Hygiene and Sanitation, and the plan is straightforward: finish the facilities, secure the water supply, and give the children a healthier place to spend their school day.
Finishing, not starting from scratch
This part matters: the community isn’t asking anyone to build from zero. The school and the Parents Teachers Association have already committed volunteer labor and local materials, and they’ve taken real steps toward better toilets, water access, and a handwashing area. What they’re asking for is help to finish what they can’t afford to finish alone.
With support, Project HUGAS will:
- Complete separate comfort rooms for boys and girls
- Finish the existing handwashing facility
- Install the plumbing and water fixtures needed to make everything usable
- Add a fog collector to supply water for handwashing and supplement water for the toilets
- Run a hygiene and sanitation orientation for the students
It’s a modest project by most standards. But it’s the kind children notice every single day they’re at school.
Finding water in the mountains
A handwashing facility is only useful if there’s water behind it. Given the school’s location, Project HUGAS includes a fog collector: a system that pulls moisture out of the air, which then gets used for handwashing and as backup water for the toilets. The goal isn’t just to put up walls and fixtures. It’s to make sure those facilities actually work, day after day.
Who benefits
The project gives first priority to the 50 pupils currently studying in the makeshift classrooms, who have the least access to adequate sanitation right now. But the completed facilities will ultimately serve all 354 learners at the school, 171 boys and 183 girls, from Kindergarten through Grade 7.
For these children, what changes is ordinary by most standards: a working toilet, a place to wash their hands, water when they need it, a cleaner school. That ordinariness is exactly the point.
After construction
Nobody wants to build something, take a photo, and leave. Sagaran Elementary and its Parents Teachers Association will own the completed facilities. School personnel will handle regular inspections and cleaning, the school will set aside funds for minor repairs, and hygiene activities will become part of its regular programming. The Rotary Club of Cagayan de Oro East Urban will monitor the project from construction through completion, including site visits, progress checks, financial monitoring, documentation, and a final inspection.
The people who use these facilities will also be the ones responsible for keeping them running.
Help us finish it
We’re seeking US$5,000 to complete Project HUGAS. That amount is what stands between unfinished structures and a working set of toilets, a functioning handwashing area, and a dependable water source for the school.
The community has already put in the labor. Parents are contributing time, teachers are helping, and the school has committed to maintaining what gets built. What’s needed now is support to get the project across the finish line.
A clean place to wash hands before heading back to class isn’t a small thing to the 354 children at Sagaran Elementary. It’s what we’re asking help to give them.
